For What He Is
by Hyaci
Summary: She wishes she could go back to the way things were, but it's too late. He's like a bad drug- she keeps coming back. She's addicted now.


I wanted to try something different, guys. Tell me how it turned out.

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She looks at him from afar, with eyes that bleed and weep with reluctant adoration. He sets her heart aflutter, of that much she is sure. Since the day of her arrival, she has been utterly and completely smitten. And she would be lying to herself if she said she has ever wanted anything else so badly.

From the moment she had fallen through the gilded gates of ticking time, landing smack-dab in the center of the Great Hall, to be helped up by the handsome man with the inscrutable black eyes, she had known- had felt herself falling into those lagoons of swirling, pooling inexpression. Empty black eyes, devoid of feeling- of love, of passion, of anything other than apathy.

It was with a certain awe, she now recalls wistfully, that she had regarded him with at first. Handsome, with an intelligent look in his eye and wit in his banter. His words had always intrigued her so- to such an extent that she had begun to believe the smooth garbage he had been spouting. Yes, Hermione can now clearly see how blind she had been, to have believed that he could be different.

She is not ashamed to admit that, at one point, she had thought him to be the one, in spite of who he is. Blinded by his intellect and his easy smile, she had allowed her heart to fancy herself in love. Hermione had begun to wish for his affections, had begun to crave them in a way she had never craved before. Perhaps she still does, from time to time, crave his touch, his cheeky remarks.

But then, she does indeed remember who he is. She knows now that she had been actively trying to forget his identity, actively trying to believe in the facade he still presents to her- but what she witnessed on that one, lonely winter day had been eye-opening.

It is still clear to her now.

_"I really, really like you." A coy, cloyingly sweet voice with a snobbish air of entitlement. Familiar to her in every way- the voice characteristic of a dynastic pureblood family._

_"I know," she had heard him murmur breathlessly, before her broke her heart._

The rest of the conversation had blended together, in a blurry aural blob. She had sagged against the wall, her mind peppered with thoughts she had not entertained- had been reluctant to consider- for a very long time.

Her purpose. The reason she had put her hand to the golden hourglass, and spun it around. Hermione had sent herself back to make a difference, to change what would happen, to alter history. But her irresolution in the face of the opposition had shaken her. Her mind, her heart- all bright and deep and great- had been taken with his fancy words and fancy manner. He had charmed her- made her stray.

He had made her want to stray.

Truth be told, she still does. She can remember one of their countless trips to the village Hogsmeade- one of the myriad that had fooled her into thinking she had succeeded where failure was the only possibility. Her heart still feels warm, her cheek still yearns for that sweet, ephemeral caress of his breath. Her lips still tingle from the kiss under the mistletoe.

_"I love you," she had beamed, her eyes glittering and blinded with the things writhing and conflicting within her heart, her hands clutching his with a desperate, clingy urgency. The very words had sent jolts of unadulterated excitement running down her spine, warming her from the tip of her red, runny nose to the soles of her weary feet._

And he had merely smiled in response, his white teeth blinding even set against the crisp snow, his eyes carefully distanced and empty. Hermione had thought nothing of it at the time, but now she can see that her confession had, in fact, not been deemed worthy of an answer. She still doesn't know what he wanted from her, but whatever it was, it wasn't her feelings. Not when she had given them to him, shoved them in his face, to be met with a chilly silence- a silence that had given her a buzz at the time. Bitterly, she realizes for the umpteenth time that she had been nothing but a game to him, a diversion. And that her confession was the cue for him to move on.

She fears for her sanity when she realizes that she wishes she were still in the game.

Because the week after, he had taken the blonde Malfoy girl to her private spot in the library, shredding her heart with the kisses he peppered on that fine, pale neck, all the while salting the wound with the hard stare he was fixing on her, speaking soft words meant for another. Mortified, she had been left with no other course of action than to flee.

It was at her boudoir, that night, that she realized he was merely manifesting his true self, albeit to a lesser extent. He was manipulative, cruel, sadistic. He had used her, and now was done with her. And she wished she could have berated herself a million times for falling for the same trick as everyone else- that he was a perfect little schoolboy.

That he was her perfect little schoolboy.

The stinging still reverberates in her heart, echoed by the taunting pangs of angst and regret.

Yet now here she sits, at the Hog's Head, waiting for him at his request. Still, she is unable to deny him anything, because her heart wrenches at the sight of his eyes- so pitch black, so dark, unreadable and mysterious. Her heart wrenches at the sight of his lips, so warm, so soft, so full of smooth, slick lies that it made her sick. That it made her long, made her wish, made her smile.

She is pulled back to reality when his voice- dry, cracking in a way she had never heard before- rings across the pub, injected with false feeling, false desperation.

"Hermione?"

He has spotted her. He sees her. And she finds herself desperately wishing that she could see him also.


End file.
